Tag Archives for " Proactive "

Is there a cure for the common cold? Well, not exactly. But we all wish there was. And there are some things you can do to prevent from getting one. If you don’t do those things, you are likely to get a cold. When do colds tend to hit you? At the worst possible time.

While Carol and I were in Rome, just before we were to come home, I came down with the dreaded common cold. Thankfully it was not as bad as it could have been and did not interfere with the things we wanted to do. However, I still wanted to be prepared in case it got bad, so I went to a local pharmacy and picked up some nasal spray. Fortunately, they had one bottle written in English so I knew what I was getting.

When I’m at home, my game plan for curing the common cold is to not get one in the first place.

Not long ago my son Gabe came down with a cold. Now, everyone in our house knows I get paranoid when someone gets a cold. Actually, they would say that paranoid is an understatement.

After all, I have to speak every Sunday and I want to be at my best. Plus, I just don’t like colds.

So in my typical fanatical fashion, I questioned everyone to check up on how often they were washing their hands. And I monitored what they were touching. I don’t even touch door knobs when this kind of thing hits our house!

To top it off, Gabe was banned from using my iPad. Yes, I go a little over the top. But, hey, I don’t get very many colds.

Sadly, most of us are not very fanatical about things that contaminate our marriages, our health, or our finances.

We could sit down and come up with a long list of things that destroy us and our relationships or our physical health.

Things like sugar, but who wants to cut down on sugar? And no one is touting it as a great food source.

I can’t believe how many marriages have been affected by an unhealthy overdose of sports. For many, sports is contaminating their relationships.

My spiritual walk with God can be contaminated by busyness, overcommitment, bad attitudes, and irresponsibility.

We could go on, but you get the point. Go radical on contamination. We allow way too many things into our lives that should not be allowed.

And don’t forget that even good things can contaminate. It could be a person, a food group, or a thing.

For years our family went to the beach and spent a lot of time in the water. And of course we spent a lot of time floating on rafts. And what do rafts do? They drift.

Before you know it you have drifted so far up or down the beach nothing looks familiar. Or you have drifted so far out that you begin to panic.

In life it happens all the time. We tend to think drifting only happens at the beach. Yet that is not the case at all.

One of the most noticeable types of drifting is marital drift.

Ask any crowd of married people who is planning on getting a divorce and few hands go up.

So why is the divorce rate so high? Because couples drift until they grow so far apart that very little is left to the marriage. Typically by the time a couple senses that they have drifted, they have drifted so far away from the shore it’s almost impossible to paddle back in.

Let’s use the acrostic D.R.I.F.T. to describe and better understand the deadly affects of drifting. You may be drifting now and not know it. Here is what it looks like.

Distraction – Sometimes I feel like the king of distraction. I’m watching a ball game and get up to go do something. Then I get caught up in a project and do not return to the game for thirty minutes. In marriage couples get distracted by work, kids, activities, and television.

Rearrange – Soon our priorities change. A couple who used to go out for dinner once a week no longer makes it a priority. Something else has taken its place. The couple who used to take long walks has allowed time on the computer to take precedence.

Immune – Sadly it no longer bothers us. No dinner date for six months and no sign of remorse. Yet it is typically at this point that we live in denial which leads us to the letter f.

Fake it – However, as we venture out into the public eye everyone thinks we have a great marriage. In fact we so good at it that when a couple breaks up it is not unusual to here, “Wow, I had not idea their marriage was in trouble.”

Top it off – In marriage it may be an affair. In one spiritual life it may be that he bails on God.

Here’s the question. Do people have affairs all the sudden? Do people bail on God overnight? Do we become obese in a week? Does our house fall apart over the weekend?

We all know the answer, but how many of us are asking the real question: Am I D.R.I.F.T.ing in my life, in my marriage, or in my physical health?

Often it is easier to drift than paddle back to shore. However, it’s time to quit drifting and start paddling!